


Hill

by curtailed



Series: Ancestral Awakenings [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-10-04 23:35:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20479328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/curtailed/pseuds/curtailed
Summary: somewhat part of the upcoming story i got, but it's mostly a side-story. will link later and stuffsomething quick n' dirty to keep me happy, cause i love the four of them and i love being self-indulgent and i'll probably write more ancestor stuff cause they're really intersting n stuff





	Hill

**Author's Note:**

> somewhat part of the upcoming story i got, but it's mostly a side-story. will link later and stuff
> 
> something quick n' dirty to keep me happy, cause i love the four of them and i love being self-indulgent and i'll probably write more ancestor stuff cause they're really intersting n stuff

It's upon a hill that they agree to meet again -- the city is unnatural to them, too full of harsh faces and wary glances to merit comfort -- but the outskirts are always a welcome reprieve. Close enough to catch the lights, far enough to hear only the quiet of the fringes, it's a quaint, lovely-patterned knoll that marks as their conference point.

"Conference."

Where they're at now it implies meetings, movements, which town to issue sermons and what seadweller forces to avoid. It implies subterfuge movement under the light of two moons, never straying far from the roads. Caves and cold hollows, bones of picked meat; a thousand, maybe hundreds of thousands -- all following after his tattered cloak. They listen with rapture. Their eyes glow with inspiration.

On the morrow, they will speak in the city.

But tonight is a time of rest. And so the Signless finds himself reclining alone in the grasses, spreading his cloak underneath him to avoid the dew stains. The cloak, in all honesty, should've been rags long ago -- once it was a pleasant white color, now it's degraded into smudged greys and browns. Still, he can never bear to rip it off his neck. It smells of smoke and grass and occasional splatters of blood.

Most importantly, it smells of the first hill where they talked together, speaking under the stars.

A faint rustle indicates another presence. Fluid, graceful movements, a face too kind and compassionate and yet thrumming with wild beauty, the Disciple leans down besides him. Maturation has made the catlike horns shinier, sleeker, her hair a beautiful sprawl down her back. It's too long ago when they were prowling among the caves, her teaching him how to catch a fish, him teaching her how to write. How she took to the skill like a bird to flight.

"Meulin," he says instead, the name rare on his lips. Only between the four of them do they ever use their hatching names, and even so, it's sparingly. They're more than their cavern names.

She always has a satchel with her. Inside, the Signless notes, are tomes of beautifully bound books, all containing his words. She writes his speeches and her own thoughts, with a passion that reminds him of the edge of a flame. Never consuming, always thrilling, and overflowing. Alongside her bags are worn tablets, for the most important of his sermons -- to be entrapped in time forever, preserved.

"Kankri," she says back, and he wrinkles his nose at the name. It reminds him of a crab for some odd reason.

They share a soft laugh. When she lies besides him they immediately fall into an embrace, her head resting on his shoulder, his face in her hair. They don't speak much these days. It's these little gestures that still make him smile, make another form of warmth surge through his chest, into his head. The day he loses her, he decides, is the day he will truly shatter.

"You lovebirdth need to get a room," someone speaks above them.

The Disciple makes a gesture at the person, not bothering to lift her head.

"Rude," the Psiioniic says, taking a seat next to the Signless's head. His scars as a slave have long faded into white, faint marks, but they never disappear. The day the Signless met him -- strung up in chains, red and blue leaking out of his eyes -- the day he _released_ his power -- it's what makes his sermons ignite, with the raw, burning intensity the mage provides for him. 

"Ith thith a party now?" The Psiioniic leans backward to rest on his elbows, head craned back toward the stars. "I didn't know we had that anymore."

"Just a meeting of old friends," the Signless mutters.

A nasally laugh escapes the mage, and they fall into an affable silence again. A zephyr stirs the grass with soft whispers. Tomorrow they will be in the greatest city of Alternia, surrounding by those who hate them with every drop of their blood, but tonight they are comforted by the stillness.

It's been so long since they've indulged in this.

Finally, the last set of footsteps join them on the summit. The Dolorosa is bedecked in her dress as always, a miracle of soft silk and jade fabric that highlights the way she carries herself -- a quiet, dignified air, like a gentle queen. Loathe to stain her dress unnecessarily, she carefully spreads her skirts out and sits cross-legged, absentmindedly patting at the Signless' horns.

"It's a beautiful night," she says.

All of them can agree. They're all recounting how they met -- how the Dolorosa carried the Signless in her arms, away from the ransacked hives and the horde of highbloods screaming for his blood, how the Disciple found them starving in the plains. How the Signless first courted her by catching her a fish on his own. How they moved among the towns, finding a slave who listened what he said, what he envisioned, and agreed.

How sometimes they ran. Sometimes peace was not enough; sometimes the Psiioniic had to lift boulders to cower the crowd, how once the Dolorosa used her many-toothed weapon and the Disciple unsheathed her claws -- trying so hard not to blood, and it was a challenge -- and always, the SIgnless spoke over them, soothing the crowd with his words. Conflict, he said, did not necessitate war. Disagreements need not end in bloodshed. Alternia was for all trolls, not just of one blood color, and from the lowest burgundy to the brightest fuchsia they should be able to walk under its dual moons and call it home.

Sometimes, they were scared.

Sometimes the Psiioniic woke to horrible dreams, dreams of the Signless whipped and dying, bleeding out awful red, his hands locked in burning chains. He dreamed the Dolorosa in a dark room, tearstained and battered, the swell and ebb of waves a sickening rhythm in her head. He dreamed the Disciple alone in a cave, drawings dripping down the walls, so alone and stark in an empty landscape. He dreamed he was a slave again, but an eternal one, empty and void and an agony that would never cease, splaying out his every nerve.

Sometimes the Dolorosa woke in cold sweat and dreamed her little grub was dying in front of her, anger suffocating his last words as he screamed his throat raw. 

Sometimes the Disciple woke to the dream of an arrow directed at her face, its arrowhead unforgiving.

Sometimes the Signless woke to the dream of the three watching him die.

Dreams were all they were.

Daymares disappeared in the night, cloaked by the shadows, and here they could enjoy the stars. Perhaps something would happen at their greatest sermon tomorrow. Perhaps it would determine if they could achieve their vision, or end up like their dreams.

But for tonight, they were together once more.

**Author's Note:**

> u can prob guess what happens the next day :(


End file.
